Intel: It's Good To Be King - In Kingman

Chipmaker Intel is opening up a huge new factory in Arizona to make 45 nanometer scaled microprocessors. They're also upgrading their existing factory in New Mexico and building a new facility in Israel to change over from the soon-to-be-obsolete standard of 65 nanometers.

The transistors on such chips are so small that more than 30 million
can fit onto the head of a pin. How small they are is critical to the
fight between Intel and AMD, because having more transistors on a
single slice of silicon raises performance while lowering manufacturing
costs.

The new processors also are made with materials that reduce the
amount of electric current escaping from transistors, a major problem
as chip parts shrink to the atomic scale.

Intel's new factory, with more than 1,000 workers, is so big that
more than 17 football fields could fit in it. Its products will go on
sale Nov. 12. AMD is aiming for the middle of next year to roll out
chips based on its own new technique, developed in partnership with
IBM, but it has not provided more specifics.

Intel is the largest chipmaker in the world, with $27.6 billion dollars in sales through the first three quarters of 2007.